What's That? Wednesday 9/21/2011

Jamie is the mastermind behind  this week's What's That? Wednesday.  It's made a huge impact on the quality of life for Jamie.  Any guesses?

Are you able to read the bottom line on the converter?
"Made in China", of course, where else would it come from?
(But we bought it off of Amazon)

It's our handy-dandy power inverter/converter!  Originally when we were planning for the move, we had decided to not bring any of our electrical things.  The electrical output for China is 220V and in the US it's 110V.  If you plug in something from the US into the wall here it will be fried, literally.  But, a friend had suggested bringing a converter/inverter, which takes the electricity out the wall (220V) and converts it to 110V.  Because of this magic piece of equipment, we are able to plug in our appliances. 

I must note that the converter is not extremely portable.  Our small one weighs about 20 pounds and sits on the kitchen counter for our coffee pot, crock pot, toaster (oh how I had missed toast), Kitchenaid mixer, etc.  The big one weighs closer to 35 pounds and we plug our printer into it.  Or, as of late we've used our humidifier with it since the girls have had colds.  Except for my beloved mixer, none of our appliances were expensive, but the thought of leaving them in the States to sit in storage for a few years and purchasing all new things here wasn't very appealing.  In addition, the quality of appliances here isn't very good.  With also figured that most of our things were wedding gifts and now 10 years old, if they were fried in the process, it wouldn't be a big deal.  (This is true for all but one of my appliances...I would shed a tear if I fried the mixer).

The converter has made Jamie very happy...hot coffee in the morning.  In the States Jamie would drink his green tea in the morning and sip on coffee throughout the day, but here it's the exact opposite.  Green tea is readily available, but it's the coffee that he has to make special at home and take to work.  What's even funnier is how much we paid for the coffee pot in the States.  I really think I paid about $10 for it at KMart at midnight one evening.  We had friends coming to help re-roof the garage the next day and Jamie's little French Press wasn't going to make the volume of coffee we needed.  It was a great excuse to get a coffee pot and for me to pick up what at the time was the newest Harry Potter book (hence the need to go at midnight, when the book was released).  Just goes to show, it's not how much things cost...it's what they mean to you that makes them important!